Purpose

The purpose of this website is to introduce people to my work: books, essays, lectures, scientific papers, etc., and to provide the resources necessary to interact with me for writing projects, research, lectures, workshops, trainings, and consultations. My focus arises out of a desire to celebrate indigenous culture, particularly that of North America, and to show how contemporary health care practices can be enriched through the inclusion of the ideas of indigenous culture into contemporary work. Thus, I will speak about traditional healing, about how psychotherapy and medicine can be modified to include the insights of traditional healing. I am interested in narrative medicine as a means for which storied indigenous practices enter contemporary medicine and psychology. I am interested in dialogical self theory and therapy as a contemporary parallel to the self-theory of indigenous cultures. I am interested in how we can train new doctors to be simultaneously humanistic, narrative, and evidence-based.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy

Associate Professor of Family Medicine, University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, Biddeford, Maine

Executive Director, Coyote Institute, Orono, Maine

Student, University of Maine, Orono

Brief Biography

Lewis Mehl-Madrona MD PhD (Cherokee and Lakota heritage) is the author of several books, including the “Coyote” Trilogy. His work discusses healing practices from Lakota, Cherokee, and Cree traditions, and how they intersect with conventional medicine via a social constructionist model. He has been writing about the use of imagery and narrative in healing since the 1980s and is certified in psychiatry, geriatrics, and family medicine. His research collaborations include work on various psychological conditions, issues of psychology during birthing, nutritional approaches to autism and diabetes, and the use of healing circles to improve overall health outcomes. He has taught in the medical schools at Maine Dartmouth, Union Institute and University (Brattleboro, VT), the University of Hawaii, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Pittsburgh, and Stanford University, where he obtained his degree in medicine. He was head of a program at Beth Israel, New York City, as well as holding a number of other positions in complementary healthcare organizations, in addition to hospitals, where he has also performed extensive emergency and psychiatric care throughout the U.S. and Canada, including about aboriginal systems and in aboriginal settings. He has also published over 100 papers in refereed journals.Lewis and Barbara live in Bangor, Maine, where he currently teaches at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, practices medicine at Eastern Maine Medical Center and Acadia Hospital, Bangor, and is the Director of Coyote Institute for Studies of Change and Transformation. http://www.mehl-madrona.com & http://www.coyoteinstitute.us

What's next?

Coyote Healing: Incorporating Native American Wisdom Into Your Daily Life

Lewis Mehl-Madrona & Barbara Mainguy

Rowe Conference Center, Rowe, Massachusetts

Discover why Andrew Weil calls Coyote Healing “medicine of the future that must be taught in medical schools, practiced in clinics, and brought to all those who seek true health.”

Thanks to his Cherokee grandparents, Lewis has been acquainted with Native American healing practices since he was a boy. Join Lewis and Barbara to explore the valuable insights of Native American spirituality and healing practices, a traditional wisdom that includes the importance of community, spirituality, ceremony, and living in balance with each other and with nature. It also emphasizes the power of story to hold and transmit that healing wisdom through ceremony and ritual, imagery, bodywork, and conversation. You’ll learn how to live in harmony with nature spirits; encounter spirits of illnesses; explore the inner landscape of your body to reveal the source of illness; draw on resources of spirit helpers, animals, and plants; gain deeper insight to resolve affliction; and much more. Ultimately you’ll find out how to incorporate more spirituality into your daily activities, how to build community, and how to take better care of yourself and others.

This is the opportunity of this year to experience our approach to healing in a cost effective way. Please share this information with your friends. It's especially useful for people who are considering coming to Maine to work with us at our Healing B & B.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, focusing on what Native culture has to offer the modern world. He has also written Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry, and, his most recent book with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He has been on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England.

Barbara Mainguy studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Toronto and received her master’s degree in Creative Arts Psychotherapy at Concordia University in Montreal. She has co-written Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story with Lewis Mehl-Madrona.Currently she is completing her MFA in documentary filmmaking at York University, Toronto, and working with Dr Mehl-Madrona in Orono, Maine. She is the Director of Education for the Coyote Institute in Orono.